Heavenly Cyberspace: The Religious Internet Chat Forum

Dr. Alexander Roman alex@unicorne.org

There are always those who feel that they have somehow missed their vocation in life, especially in connection with a vocation involving church life. We may ourselves feel that we would have made great theologians, or intuitive representatives on ecumenical commissions, or else erudite church leaders. But, thanks to the internet, we don’t need to feel unfulfilled in these respects. We just need to join a religious chat forum!

Politics and religion have always been the “verboten” topics because of the inevitable passions they evoke in us. People have fought and died for their political and religious beliefs – and they still do. But the chat forum at least keeps the verbal combatants apart from one another in bodily terms, so that they cannot do any physical harm to each other in the heat of argument – one more thing to be grateful to the internet for.

However, the emotional upset that can ensue from participation in a religious chat forum can be quite unnerving, to say the least. It can transform otherwise calm individuals into angry apologists and defenders of their interpretation of their beliefs where common courtesy is thrown out of the computer screen. And I know because “I’ve been there and done that!”

The internet has produced a whole series of challenges to the way in which human relationships are conducted. One of these is the partial, incomplete view of the person we are communicating with via the internet. Words can be typed and read. But, as is necessarily the case given the particular medium that is the internet, their full context in relation to the actual human person that typed them is often lost.

As a result, those same words can be and are given interpretations by those reading them that were never intended by the author. And so, the stage is set for conflict in cyberspace over religious views.

The Catholic and Orthodox forums that are around do indeed provide many opportunities for learning about religion, church history, liturgy and the like. They also allow for the development of some real friendships. And they are also places where people may articulate their specific spiritual and material needs and have them prayed over.

But what is life without a good argument? Coffee shops and other “intellectual hangouts” abound with people playing a game of “logical chess” to see who can get the other into a philosophical “checkmate.” The internet chat forum provides another opportunity for just such an endeavour.

From a more sociological point of view, the religious chat forum, one could argue, often mirrors church life in an internet context. (It does sound like a great topic for a book, doesn’t it?)

Administrators and moderators tend to reflect the authority of bishops and monastic superiors in laying down the rules.

One could even be “excommunicated” from a forum for a time or always, depending on the infraction one is guilty of. Canonical penances are also levied by the chat forum hierarchies, if simple scolding doesn’t achieve its desired aim!

While administrators and moderators present themselves as being more or less objective in their dealings with posters or those who actively participate in the forums, the fact is that their own biases and definitions of what is “politically correct” in religious terms tend to come through quite clearly. These also define the very character of individual religious forums as well.

And so Eastern Catholics appear to be forever fighting an uphill battle in getting Western Catholics and Protestants, on the one hand, to stop seeing them as “Roman Catholics of the Eastern Rites,” and, on the other, getting Orthodox Christians from calling them “Uniates” or “Papal Catholics” and the like.

Some Eastern Catholics prefer the title, “Orthodox in communion with Rome” and this creates no end of trouble for them from both Orthodox and Catholics.

Roman Catholic posters inevitably pester Eastern Catholics with questions designed to measure their “Catholicity” according to specific Latin standards of faith and conduct.

Orthodox Christians go after Byzantine Catholics, for instance, over the issue of “in communion with Rome” and try to get them to admit that they are, in fact, “under Rome” and have no real say in the jurisdictional control of their Particular Churches.

This matter always explodes on the computer screen whenever Rome makes an announcement of a new Eastern Catholic bishop’s appointment. What participation did the Eastern Catholic church have in the decision? Is Rome just going over its head in this? Were the rights of the church respected?

The Eastern Catholics on these forums are determined to define themselves as being completely distinct from Roman Catholics and so a certain “push and pull” factor ensues.

The more Eastern Catholics “push” away from Rome and Latinized spirituality, the more “pull” some feel to not only be “Orthodox in communion with Rome” but also “out of communion” with Rome.

And Roman Catholics seem to sometimes get caught up in the flow of this process when they begin on a journey toward Eastern Catholicism and wind up as Orthodox Christians.

Again, from a sociological point of view, if the religious culture of Eastern Catholicism becomes as identical to that of Orthodoxy as possible, the union with Rome remains the only real “outstanding” issue that divides Eastern Catholics from the Orthodox.

And that issue becomes less and less of a priority over time, as Eastern Catholics attend Orthodox services, read Orthodox literature and develop Orthodox friendships. Soon, even such “union with Rome” is seen as the “last great Latinization” to be rejected by Byzantine Catholics about to become Orthodox.

One meets converts to Eastern Catholicism and Orthodoxy from all sorts of backgrounds on these chat forums. Everything from Protestant pastors to Franciscan monastics.

And there is the phenomenon of what one could call the “Roman Catholic refugee from the post-Vatican II Church.”

These are Latin Catholics of a traditionalist background of some sort whose religious predisposition simply cannot get used to the Novus Ordo Latin Mass, who don’t like the perceived liberalism in the liturgy and life of the Latin Church and who otherwise find the rituals and liturgical/ascetical/creedal traditionalism of the Christian East to be more to their liking as a result.

They have, of course, other options, such as joining a traditionalist Roman parish or group. But they don’t want to be seen as pariahs in the sense of “swimming against the mainstream” and so they simply join another mainstream.

As Eastern Catholics and Orthodox, these individuals continue to often maintain their Roman Catholic perspective on things.

One comes across just such a Roman Catholic in the Eastern Catholic Church who knows, by heart it would seem, the bureaucratic hierarchy of the Vatican offices governing the Eastern Churches where cradle Eastern Catholics often see it as an organizational dinosaur that should have been dismantled and discarded long ago.

Such Roman Catholic refugees shout the loudest about the “de-ethnicization” of the Eastern Catholic Churches, English liturgies and the like. They develop their own caricatures of the ethno-cultural component of the Eastern Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, which is often based upon ethnic foods and dances.

Certainly, there are Eastern Catholic and Orthodox jurisdictions that are “mainstream friendly,” but not all by far. The close connection between religious faith and national culture (which is based upon ideas rather than material culture) in the Eastern Churches is somehow lost on those of the decidedly assimilationist perspective.

In fact, while on their guard against “Latinization,” the lack of appreciation for the link between church and national culture in the “ethnic Churches” of the East is perhaps the greatest Latinization of all.

Even the Roman Catholic Church is promoting the strength and vibrancy of the local culture in the local church. And the current pope’s great love for his own national Church of Poland is well known – no “internationalism” there!

In their unending struggle against Latinizations, Eastern Catholic and Orthodox converts have also tended to create artificial distinctions in religious practice where none really exist.

Something like the Rosary and its continued use in Eastern Catholic parishes is seen as something that needs to be uprooted in the name of Eastern liturgical purity.

In fact, the private recitation of the “Rule of the Mother of God” is very old in Orthodoxy, especially among the Russian Orthodox, perhaps the greatest purists of Eastern liturgical practice.

Eastern Catholics tend to react negatively to Roman Catholic devotions to the Sacred Hearts, for example, when, in fact, their own martyred bishops were avid practitioners of these, including the adoration of the reserved Holy Communion, monstrances and all!

There are even Orthodox parishes in western Ukraine that have the stations of the Cross and other Western devotions, something brought into it by Eastern Catholics who, since the time of the liquidation of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1946, attended the Orthodox parishes there.

Eastern Catholic and Orthodox converts also tend to become rather strident in their perspectives on faith – even more than their own bishops!

Frankly, it is surprising that ecumenical commissions don’t make use of such chat forums more often for the resolution of issues such as the Filioque (the Western addition to the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father AND the Son) and others!

On one such forum, it would seem that the Filioque issue has garnered more pages than what any Orthodox/Catholic commission has ever published!

Like the man who enjoyed reading selections from his religious “book of the month club” with a cut-out paper bishop’s mitre on his head, posters on chat forums may pontificate on matters of faith, morals and parish activities that is certainly empowering for any lay person . . .

For my part, having an intense interest in all things Orthodox/Eastern Church, I developed the habit of posting much too much and on almost every topic I saw.

And I had difficulty handling what I perceived to be offensive responses from those who sometimes violently disagreed with me or else with whom I just had a personality clash. Rather than removing myself from such forums, I tended to stay and try to seek redress in rather self-serving and otherwise inappropriate ways.

This led to all sorts of “pastoral counsel” from the administration, suggestions to develop a thicker skin and the like. “No wonder people don’t take you seriously,” and words to the effect that “the person who attacked you was right, you are self-serving” are, however, probable indications that a person should get another hobby.

Now that, by mutual agreement, I’m off my last chat forum for good, I won’t be seeking to join another, kind invitations from others notwithstanding!

I’ve learned a great deal from the people I’ve conversed with and whose posts I’ve read over the years. I’ve learned much from our mutual exchange of ideas, emotional and nerve-wracking as that exchange has sometimes been.

While rudeness and anger can never be appropriate for Christians engaging in dialogue with one another, the fact is that in our apparently modern, religiously indifferent society, we are still ready to “go to the mat” for what we believe is right.

And, in and of itself, that bodes very well for the future of religious faith and of the Church as a whole.

Ukrainian Orthodoxy